How to create and add subtitles / closed captions to my videos
Adding subtitles / closed captions to a video lesson on Calibrae is easy. It takes two steps.
1. Create VTT file(s)
Create a Web Video Text Track file (VTT) with the narrative text for each language. There are many good free and paid tools that can be used to create VTT files. Subtitle Edit Online is a reasonable option. It is free, web-based (but does not require video upload), is fairly intuitive, and outputs a standard VTT file that can be uploaded to Calibrae.
- Use the Video menu to add a video.
- Use the Subtitle menu to add a new set of subtitles.
- Add a sentence or phrase in the text edit pane.
- Press the space bar to play / pause the video, and
- Use your mouse to drag the corresponding block on the time line to set the times at which the text will be displayed. Select the middle of the block to move the whole block, or select either end to adjust its start or end time.
- Turn the mouse wheel to move forward or backwards in time on the video timeline.
- When happy that the text is displayed in synch with the video narrative, add another sentence or phrase by clicking the right-button on the mouse whilst hovering over the previous sentence or phrase (shown in green).
- Repeat the process until all of the text has been added.
- Finally, use the Subtitle menu to save / download the VTT file. Be sure to save as a WebVTT file.
The exported VTT file is a text file with timestamps. The VTT file is now ready for upload to Calibrae.
NOTE: Any good VTT editor will output the same format VTT file. Go ahead and use the VTT tool of your choice.
Repeati the process to create VTT files for each of your required languages.
2. Upload VTT to Calibrae
With a VTT file created, navigate to the edit page of the video activity, then...
- Click Add subtitle file
- From the popup, select from the dropdown list the language of the file
- Click Select File to navigate on your computer's file system to the VTT file
- Click Add subtitle track to upload the VTT file and associate it with your video
Repeat the process with the VTT file of each language.
Finally, switching to the learner view, the learner can now select to view any of the Closed Caption subtitles.
